Shimmer
by lydiamaartin
Summary: Because she's honey and starshine and picture-perfect memories. - ScorpiusDominique


**Disclaimer: I don't own anybody you recognize.**

**Ages: Dominique and Louis have been switched so that she's the youngest one and Lily's age and Louis is the middle child and James's age.**

**For the kind anonymous person who requested this on formspring with the prompts 'explosion' and 'chocolate' =)

* * *

**It's summer and they're kids and she's got really pretty hair, so when she asks if she can take a picture, he says yes.

"Stand under that tree, would you?" she asks, her orange-gold curls bouncing in her ponytail as she adjusts her position and the muggle camera held within her hands.

"Just go with it," Albus instructs, smiling at his younger cousin as he, Rose, and Scorpius arrange themselves in a semi-circle underneath the shade of a lemon tree.

Dominique beams, raises the camera, and snaps a photo, and the sunlight catches on those curls of hers and makes them shimmer. Even at twelve, he's got a good eye for pretty girls (and if there's one thing she is, it's _pretty_—but that's not everything).

"Can I see?" he asks when she finishes taking photos and Albus and Rose have dispersed into the crowd of redheads in an attempt to stop Lily from killing Louis and James for some prank or the other.

She blink those _prettypretty_ blue eyes at him and nods, offering him the camera. It's a muggle piece of technology, so he fumbles with it awkwardly for a moment before she places her tiny, fair-skinned hands over his and shows him which buttons to press.

"You're really good," he marvels, flipping through the photos. "Where did you learn how to do this?"

"Uncle Dennis taught me," she answers, her voice light and bubbly in a direct contrast to Lily's energetic, _firefirefire_ way of attacking life. "He's not a Weasley," she adds upon seeing his questioning look. "He married my Aunt Gabrielle."

"Oh, that's cool," he says sincerely and a smile appears on her face. "You have a pretty smile."

"Thank you," she answers, her blue-hot star eyes lighting up at the compliment. "I'll see you around, yeah?"

She runs off into the crowd of redheads, leaving Scorpius with picture-perfect memories in his hands.

* * *

Next summer, she's practically glowing with excitement, dancing around in her grandparents' backyard with Lily and her multitude of cousins as they celebrate both her sister's birthday, the anniversary of Voldemort's defeat, and the joy of finally getting to go to Hogwarts.

"Clearly," Rose giggles as she explains that to him, "the last one is most important."

Louis whirls his little sister around and she tumbles off the makeshift dance floor, popping up next to Scorpius with a pink tint to her cheeks from the heat and the energy she'd been using. There's a smile on her face and moonlight shimmering over her wild honey curls and at thirteen, with his hormones just beginning to act up, he thinks she's the prettiest thing he's ever seen.

"Hello," she says brightly, giggling because she's a little girl enjoying a midsummer night. "Rosie, Scorpius."

"Hey, Nika," Rose beams, ruffling her little cousin's hair before wandering off to play peacemaker between Albus and James.

"Hello," Scorpius greets, offering her a little wave.

Dominique sets her hands on her hips and the camera dangling from her wrist draws his attention as she studies him. "You look bored."

"I am bored," he admits. "The Gala was never my favorite outdoor event."

"Can I take a picture?" she asks him, holding up her camera, her blue eyes bright.

"Of course," he smiles and makes to strike a pose.

"No, no," Dominique shakes her head, making her honey curls bounce. "You look too unnatural. Just…be yourself."

He hesitates for a moment, then fills a glass of ice-cold lemonade and tips it down his throat.

_Snap!_ goes her camera and she pulls it down, beaming. "That was perfect! You're really photogenic, you know that?"

Without thinking about it, he reaches over and tugs on one of her shimmering curls, a light smile on his face. "That's because I have such a good photographer."

He carries a memory of her answering smile in his heart for months, only don't tell anyone that, because Al would never let him live it down.

* * *

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

Three guesses as to where Dominique and Lily are Sorted.

"Aren't you disappointed?" he asks Albus, watching Lily scurry off towards her beaming brother and cousins. "That's both of your siblings in Gryffindor."

Albus glances down at his green and silver tie, then over at his siblings on the other side of the Hall, considering it for a moment. "Nah," he says finally. "Slytherin makes me unique. And it gets under James's skin, so it's a hell of a lot better than boring old Gryffindor."

Scorpius sighs, tugging on his own Slytherin tie. "Wish Slytherin made me unique," he complains.

Albus pats him on the back. "You're friends with me and Rose. I think that makes you unique enough. By the way, did you know Lily's convinced you two will fall in love and get married?"

"Huh?" Scorpius sends him a puzzled glance. "Me and Rose?"

"Yup," Albus snorts. "I told her she's crazy."

"She's Lily Luna Potter," Scorpius points out. "I think 'crazy' comes with the name."

Albus grins, they share a laugh, and then both settle down to watch the Sorting.

Rose welcomes Dominique to the table with a smile. "Finally, another Ravenclaw," she sighs. "It's been way too long since I was Sorted."

"It's been two years," Scorpius points out.

Dominique giggles, her eyes still bright and shimmery, maybe from the ceiling lights, maybe from excitement, or maybe because she's _Dominique_. "That's a long time when you're barely a teenager," she protests in Rose's defense.

Rose beams. "You were always my favorite," she tells her little cousin proudly as Scorpius's jaw drops. To be perfectly honest, he hadn't expected Dominique to have anything in her favor worth noting beyond her inhumane beauty.

Clearly, he'd been mistaken.

* * *

_Snap!_

…

_Snap!_

…

_Snap!_

"Oh, my goodness," Albus groans, smacking his head with his Transfiguration textbook and then wincing at the pain. "Nika! Please stop taking photos! I'm trying to study here!"

"Sorry," Dominique laughs, not looking very sorry at all. "I wasn't even taking photos of you, Al! I was taking them of Lily."

"Where's Lily?" Scorpius demands. "I don't see her."

Dominique points upward.

Scorpius tilts his head and nearly jumps out of his skin when Lily appears in front of his face, hanging from a tree branch by her knees, her strawberry curls swinging back and forth near his face.

"Lily!" Albus exclaims, startled. "Stop popping up out of nowhere!"

"To be fair, that isn't nowhere," Rose points out. "She's in a tree."

"Oh, _thank_ you for that enlightening bit of information, Rosie," Scorpius mutters, moving his books further away from a giggling Lily. "Got any more? Perhaps you want to inform us that the sky is blue?"

"We're in Scotland," Rose grins mischievously. "The sky is grey."

"Shut up," Scorpius mutters and attempts to return to his studying while the cousins bicker with each other.

Dominique sits down next to him, her camera safely around her wrist once more. "If it bothers you guys, all you have to do is say so," she tells him lightly, stretching out on the grass of the courtyard.

Scorpius smiles over at her. "It doesn't bother me. It's distracting, sure, but it's not a bother. Al's just going a bit crazy with studying. He's awful at Transfiguration and we've got a huge test coming up."

"Are you sure?" she asks, toying with her camera. Scorpius watches her clean the already-spotless screen three times before sighing and covering his hand with hers.

"Positive," he says. "Just don't do _that_ and we're good."

Dominique looks down at their hands, his covering her smaller, warmer one, and blushes. "Um. All right, then."

Scorpius pulls back, flashes her a smile, and returns to his studying.

Still hanging upside down from the tree and avoiding Albus, Lily mouths at her best friend, '_Wow, he's an idiot_'.

* * *

Somehow, he's managed to become quite protective of Dominique (and Lily), and he has no idea how that happened.

"It's a complex," Rose explains, shrugging, when he mentions it to her and Albus. "They're both so tiny and adorable and constantly getting into trouble that everyone older than them wants to look out for them. You should have seen James when some kid tried flirting with Lily."

"She's _twelve_!" Scorpius says in disbelief. "What kind of an idiot would flirt with Harry Potter's twelve-year-old daughter?"

"The same kind of idiot who'd make eyes at Bill Weasley's youngest daughter," Albus tells him.

Scorpius frowns, unsettled. "They're _kids_."

"Like I said," Rose says, rolling her eyes. "Tiny plus adorable plus constantly getting in trouble equals overprotectiveness. You're not the only one."

But he's pretty sure he's the only one who glares other boys away from attempting to pose for Dominique.

"Stop doing that!" Dominique demands of him one day, startling him away from the world of charming mice to dance. "Has it ever occurred to you that I might _want_ pictures of them?"

"Why would you want that?" he asks, genuinely clueless. "They're all prats. Trust me, they're in my year, I think I'd know."

"I just want pictures!" she cries, looking entirely annoyed (and entirely adorable—maybe Rose had a point there). "Stop scaring them off!"

"Okay, okay!" he says, raising his hands in surrender. "I will. I promise."

She huffs, then takes a moment to consider him with her unsettlingly blue eyes. "Can I take a picture of you?"

Scorpius grins. "Of course."

Dominique beams, instantly forgetting her annoyance, and raises her camera. He flashes her a smile and she snaps the photo.

"You know, you're probably my favorite subject to photograph," she remarks, studying the picture on her camera screen. "You can make even still, muggle photos dynamic. Must be that Black blood. Teddy can do the same thing."

"Teddy has rainbow hair," Scorpius points out, feeling something inside him warm at the compliment alongside his cheeks. "What so special about me?"

Dominique giggles. "Now you're just fishing for compliments," she teases before dancing away in a whirl of _shimmering curls_ and _fairytale pictures_ and _blue-star eyes_ and, okay, so maybe Rose was right about, well, everything.

But then, she's Rose. She's always right. It's genetic, or something.

* * *

"Are you avoiding me?" she demands in the middle of her third year, his fifth, her hands on her hips, still _shimmershimmer _shining like those blue stars in her eyes.

"No, I'm studying," he retorts, his instant defense this year for whomever questions him—Lily, mostly, and his own cousins. "And keep your voice down. We're in the library."

Dominique sits down, a tad gracelessly for a girl who's part-Veela, on the chair opposite him. "You study too much. That, or you've been spending too much time with Rose."

"She's one of my best friends," Scorpius protests. "Of course I've been spending time with her! You'll understand when _you_ have to take your OWLs."

"When was the last time you saw sunlight?" she asks.

"Uh, yesterday. There was a Quidditch match and Rose dragged us out," he tells her.

"Who won?" Dominique challenges, crossing her arms in a manner too similar to Lily for his comfort.

"Um." Scorpius has to take a moment to rack his brains. "Slytherin?"

She tosses her hair, a triumphant smile on her face. "Ravenclaw. Come on, Malfoy. I am going to reunite you with that wonderful ball of light outside."

Scorpius begins shaking his head, but he already knows it's a lost cause. She's not Lily's best friend for nothing, and she's already got her hand in his and is dragging him up and away from those precious, lifesaving books of his.

"Dominique!" he whines. "Let me go!"

She marches him out of the library, through the hallways, and into the grounds in five minutes flat instead of replying, and, _damn_, she's strong for such a little girl. It must be a side effect of being a Potter's best friend, he concludes, as both Louis and Rose are freakishly strong as well.

"There," she says cheerfully once she's almost blinded him with sunlight. "Doesn't that feel good?"

"No," he scowls and makes to stomp back inside.

Then an idiot third year boy with too-dark hair and too-brown eyes sidles up to her and asks with an annoying grin on his face, "Hey, Nika, will you go to Hogsmeade with me?"

"You know what, maybe I'll stay," Scorpius decides quickly, ignoring her raised eyebrow, and plants himself in between Dominique and the boy.

He glares, and the kid runs off.

"So," he says brightly when he turns back to Dominique, "you got any plans for the sunlight?"

She sighs, abruptly losing her annoyed posture. "Lily was right. You _are_ an idiot."

Scorpius hums in consideration, well-used to Lily's insults. "Thanks, Nika."

She smile, just a little. "What do you want to do?"

He shoves his hands in his pocket and smiles back at her. "This was your idea."

"Right." Dominique taps a finger against her cheek in thought. "I can show you how to take pictures, if you like?"

"I would like," he grins and she pulls her camera out of her pocket. "Is that one of those muggle digital cameras?"

"Don't be silly," Dominique says absently, pressing a button to turn the camera on. "Those don't work at Hogwarts. It's a magical digital one. Uncle Dennis is developing a whole new line of them. They're becoming really popular. I got this for free."

Scorpius smiles fondly at her. "You weren't such a chatterbox when I first met you, were you?"

She giggles, pressing the cool metal of the camera into his hands. "I wasn't. Lily's spent years working on me."

"I bet," he snorts, turning the camera around to get a feel for it. "So, how does this thing work, anyway?"

Dominique smiles and begins to show him which button does what and it's probably the best afternoon of his life.

* * *

Rebellion is a _thrill_, but it doesn't feel so good when he's looking at the photos.

"I think this counts as voyeurism," he tells Lily, thumping her lightly with a pillow.

She giggles, dancing out of his reach. "I'm going to delete them. Nika would hate to know that I've borrowed her camera and used it to take photos of you and Rose snogging."

Scorpius glowers. "Delete them _now_, you little brat."

"All right. But before I do, can I say 'I told you so'?" Lily asks, collapsing on a couch, half in hysterics as she fumbles with the camera.

"You just did!" he points out, feeling himself flush as she scrolls through several rather comprimising photos. "How on Earth did you get these, anyway?"

"Magic," Lily beams. "Also, you two aren't very subtle. I mean, behind the shed is _so_ cliché."

"Shut up," he scowls. "Cliché works, all right?"

"It does?" chimes in a new voice, and both Scorpius and Lily freeze. She turns around first to smile a greeting at Dominique, who's descending the staircase with her honey curls damp and loose and her blue eyes curious as she regards them.

"Um," Scorpius stammers, almost forgetting to breathe.

Lily pinches his arm out of Dominique's line of vision to get him to focus. "We were talking about Rose and Scorpius," she blurts out, earning herself a glare from the latter part of the coupling.

"Oh," Dominique nods, her smile a little less shimmery than it usually is. "I thought I heard Al complaining about you two."

She breezes past him, stealing her camera back from Lily on the way, and Scorpius is left feeling as if those picture-perfect memories have just crumbled to dust.

* * *

"You know, we don't actually have to sneak around," Rose gasps against his lips one night on a rendezvous by the Potters' lake. "Everyone knows, and nobody _seriously_ disapproves."

"Yeah, but I doubt anyone wants to see us snogging, either," Scorpius reminds her, kissing her again just to shut her up, because, well, she's Rose, and she can go on for hours if they let her.

She responds eagerly, her protest lost in the clash of tongues and lips, her melted chocolate taste hot against his mouth. Her touch is like fire on his fair, icy skin, her blue eyes like summer skies _(instead of nighttime stars)_ and she wraps herself around him and he's lost in a blaze of _firefire _red hair and the thrill of rebellion that Lily had so accurately photographed.

"Do you love me?" she asks later that same night when they've taken a break from making out and are just relaxing out in the backyard, lying on the grass and stargazing.

"I…" Scorpius hesitates, chancing a glance at his—beautiful, _shining_—girlfriend and wishing she _shimmered_, just a little. "Rosie—"

"It's okay," she interrupts, a wistful smile on her face as she reaches over and twines her fingers around his hand. And the thing is, they fit together perfectly, they _do_, but it's not perfection he's looking for.

"We'll always be friends," he whispers, raising her hand and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Always, always, always. We're AlbusRoseandScorpius, forever."

"Forever," she agrees, cuddling into him, her red hair fanned out like _brightwildfire_ instead of the _sweetshimmeryhoney_ he really wants.

* * *

It's summer again, but they're not kids, and her hair's as pretty as ever, so when she asks for a picture, he says yes (because when has he ever been able to refuse her?).

"Just me?" he asks, a little surprised, because she's been shooting group portrait after group portrait this summer and she must have a million of him and Rose and Al, but none of just him post-graduation.

"Just you," Dominique confirms, a smile on her face as she raises the camera. "No, don't give me that cheesy, fake smile. I want it natural. You're best when you're natural."

There's a double meaning hidden somewhere in her words, but Scorpius decides not to waste time figuring it out when he could be marveling at how pretty she is when she smiles.

"You're kind of amazing at this, you know that?" he tells her when she shows it to him.

"Thanks," she beams, her blue-star eyes lit up like he's just made her day. "This is probably my best one of the day."

He observes the picture and has to agree. She's captured him leaning against the apple tree, lost in a daydream as he gazes up at the clear blue sky, his pose relaxed and natural, just like she wanted. What she doesn't know is that he's daydreaming of _her_, but that's a minor detail, he thinks.

"So," she begins, looping the camera string around her wrist where it usually hangs. "What's up with you and Rose?"

Scorpius grins. "We're friends. Why so interested?"

Dominique blushes, twirling a honey curl around one finger like she always did when she was nervous. "Lily's been dying for some gossip."

"Just Lily?" he teases, shifting closer to her with every word. "Not you, Nika?"

"No—" she begins, drawing the word out, and then she gasps because his lips are on hers and he's kissing her like he's never kissed Rose and, hell, he's not sure where this confidence came from—maybe from those darn Potter-Weasley Gryffindors he's always hanging around—but he's pretty sure he's never experienced anything better.

And she's _shimmershimmer_ _blazing_ with her honey curls getting tangled in his fingers and her watermelon taste refreshingly cool against his mouth (because she's kinda the opposite of Rose and he kinda loves her like that) and it feels like there's an explosion of butterflies waltzing around in his stomach and he's not really sure when or how it happened, but somehow, he's fallen in love with this little, shimmering photographer-girl.

Because she's _honey_ and _starshine_ and _picture-perfect memories_ and, oh, she shimmers like a thousand_(million)_ blue-hot stars.

Dominique pulls back, her hands woven into his vanilla-blond hair and her blueblue eyes bright with dreams. "Did that have a reason?"

"Yeah," Scorpius nods, grinning as he lets himself fall backward, her slender body tumbling down on top of him. "I might just be in love with you."

"Might?" she questions, sliding her arms down to rest on his silk-covered chest.

"All right," he chuckles, twisting a honey curl around just to watch it shimmer. "I _am_ in love with you. And it would be really cool if you would be my girlfriend."

She giggles, leaning down and kissing him soundly. "That's a yes," she adds before he can ask. "Actually, that's a hell yes."

"Oh, good," he grins, settling his arms around her waist. "I'd hate to admire from afar. Too cliché, don't you think?"

"Mm," she agrees as he lets his lips claim hers again. "Right."

_(_Because when clichés don't work is when the best stories happen_)

* * *

_**Author's Notes. The fluff. It's blinding. =D But I'm rather fond of this not-so-little oneshot, simply because Dominique/Scorpius are one of my favorite pairings and I don't write them anywhere near often enough! This fic is for:**

**Sky-Azure Raindrops and Aebbe for helping me with my characterization of Dominique! **

**And Bethhhhhhh because she loves S/D, too, and she also writes them amazingly, if more angstily =P**

**I hope you guys enjoyed this! Please don't favorite with reviewing (and while we're at it, please review! =D) Thanks!**


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